What is there you’d like to learn how to do but haven’t yet? When I was a little girl, my parents bought a piano. My mother had always dreamed of playing the piano so daddy bought her one. She went out and purchased a program designed to teach you how to teach yourself to play. It contained books and cassette tapes guaranteed to teach you how to play the piano [I know many of you are going to Google to learn what a cassette tape is. Just don’t tell me and I can pretend I’m not getting older.] Each book contained written instructions with assignments to practice. You could listen to the tape and hear what the song was supposed to sound like when you perfected it.
Mom was interested in it for a while but she didn’t put forth the time or dedication necessary to learn to play. I remember one day when my grandmother called to see how things were going, mom told her to hold on and she’d play something for her. Mom then proceeded to put the telephone receiver by the tape recorder and press play. My grandmother was impressed and after a few minutes, mom came clean and told her it was the tape.
Many of us approach our relationship with the Lord the same way. We come back from a conference or retreat or we have an amazing sermon at church that spurs us to want to go deeper in our relationship with the Lord. We are so blown away by what the teacher shared and we declare we want to go deeper. We want what he or she has in a relationship with the Lord.
We rush out and buy commentaries and books on topics of interest. We come home and unload our purchases and decide tomorrow, we’ll get to them and begin our journey. We may press in for a day or two and then we go back to our old ways of ritualistic prayers and surface level investigation of the Word. How do I know this? Because I’ve done it and if you’re honest with yourself, you probably have too.
James 1:5 tells us “If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.” Jeremiah 29:13 says “You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart.” Psalm 32:8 says “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you and watch over you.”
We do not need a degree in theology or a stack of books higher than ourselves to learn more about God and His ways. He has promised to teach us through His Word. He wrote it, so He knows it better than anyone else and He knows how to teach the material in a way to make it relevant and alive for us [2 Timothy 3:16]. The great theologians we read about today, like Charles Spurgeon, John Wesley, and A. W. Tozer, had the Word of God as their text and the Lord Himself as their teacher and they gained amazing insight and understanding of the Word of God and so can you and I.
So you want to go deeper with the Lord? You want to understand what His Word has to say? All that is required is time, the Bible and a willing heart. Grab your Bible and settle down. I hear the teacher calling for class to begin…